Tucked into a white-brick building in a nameless center of warehouses, storage facilities and repair services on Fraser Avenue in Silver Spring, the D.C. Fencers Club is as physically inconspicuous as is the sport it features within the American athletic landscape.

But when visitors open the steel door at the club's entrance and stand atop the descending staircase that leads to the gym floor, they are hit with a cacophony of sounds that are anything but inconspicuous: the slashing pings of metal-on-metal, rumbling floorboards as fencers violently lunge toward their opponents and the groans and grunts of defeat. With nearly all of the gym's roughly 50 inhabitants Thursday evening wearing a mesh mask and all-black or all-white suits, the D.C. Fencer's Club has the appearance of an urban dungeon.

For the club's head coach, Janusz Smolenski, the club is like the sport itself, obscured from casual passersby but not from those within the fencing community.

"We are very well known in America, because our fencers are so good," said Janusz Smolenski, the club's head coach.

Smolenski then reels off a list of his fencers' recent accomplishments: second in the Junior Olympics, North American champion for over-50 and over-70 age groups, junior national champions. And those accomplishments have taken the club's fencers from their dimly lit basement gym to places like Hungary, Holland, Azerbaijan and Smolenski's homeland of Poland.

Smolenski, who has earned the status of "fencing master," the closest thing in fencing to a professional because he is paid to coach, came to the United States 20 years ago after teaching physical education in Poland. He and his fellow coaches at D.C. Fencers Club, Dariusz Gilman, Robert Suchorski and Ilya Lobanenkov, all trained at the ASZ AWF Katowice fencing club in Poland and came to America because "they wanted some adventure," Smolenski said.

They got involved with D.C. Fencers Clubwhich has been in existence for more than 100 yearswhen it was based out of Washington, D.C. For the 10 years the club has had its home in Silver Spring, it has grown from about 20 members to the 200 it currently trains. The members range in age from 8 to 74. They range in skill from a beginner looking for new ways to exercise to national champions and prospective Olympians.

While Smolenski touts the program's achievements on the national and global level, he insists the "biggest success for us is the teenagers that go to good schools;" several of the club's fencers are attending four-year colleges on full scholarships for fencing.

But many got into the sport with more inauspicious intentions.

"I got into fencing because of a freak accident," said James Kaull, 18, a D.C. resident. "I was late for basketball practice at the Chevy Chase recreation center when I was 8. The fencing club was there also, and my mom knew I loved Star Wars at the time, so she signed me up and now I'm here."

Kaull fences at the University of Notre Dame on a full scholarship and won the 2005 Junior World Cup in Montreal. After he graduates college, Kaull intends to train for the 2016 Olympics. After falling into the sport by accident, Kaull stuck with it, because it mixes mental and physical prowess; fencing is often called "physical chess."

Fencing is played with one of three weapons, which vary in size and flexibility: the épée, the foil and the sabre. Kaull uses an épée, which, along with the foil, are point-thrusting weapons, scoring points when the tip touches the opponent's metallic "lamé," or jacket. Electronic signals through the lamé keep score. Foil and épée require a certain number of points to win a match, or else the person with the most points after a certain amount of time is the winner. Sabre matches, based on more thrusting and slashing, are not timed at all.

With its complex rules, fencing is not a sport that can be picked up and put down. It's also expensive. Michael Josephs, a 17-year-old junior at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School who finished second in this year's Junior Olympics in the sabre under-17 age group, said the gear necessary to even participate in a fencing match costs more than $600.

But Kaull's story of accidentally being introduced to the sport, getting hooked and becoming nationally successful is fairly common at D.C. Fencers Club

Rockville resident Jim Adams, 70, began fencing in 1957 simply so he could say he played a varsity sport. He became a collegiate All-American and this year won gold medal in the over-70 age group at the North American Cup in both épée and foil style.

"When I started, we were jousting on the back of dinosaurs," Adams, a former pastor, joked to Kaull Thursday.

On Thursday, Adams fenced against middle-aged men and teens. Channing Foster, a 17-year-old from D.C. who finished eighth in the women's épée under-20 age group at the Junior Olympics this year, fences against men and boys, in addition to the cadre of women fencers at the club.

"It's a close community," Foster said. "The older, wiser, more mature fencers help us along, even if we may be a little faster."

Smolenski said the inclusive nature of the sport has allowed it to increase in popularity recently in America. There are about 30,000 members of the U.S. Fencing Association and about 200,000 active fencers nationwide.

But, as even the sport's most ardent students acknowledge, there is a stigma to fencing, that it is too much like ballet and that its complex rules and styles are simply ruining a good sword fight.

"A lot of [my friends] say, Oh fencing. Touch, poke poke,'" said D.C. resident Isaac Shelanski, 11, mimicking a dainty parry. "That's fine, if they actually came to the club they might find out it's not that.

"If they put on a mask and a jacket and picked up a sword, they wouldn't be laughing anymore."

The D.C. Fencers Club is located at 9330 Fraser Ave. in Silver Spring. Registration is open for its summer camps, held July 12 to July 16, July 19 to July 23, July 26 to July 30 and Aug. 23 to Aug. 27. Camps are open to beginners as well as experienced fencers. Participants must be at least eight years of age. Visit dcfencing.com for more information.

For a video report on the D.C. Fencers Club, go to www.gazette.net/video.